“In Hot Pursuit!”

 

23rd Psalm

April 17, 2005

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John Fleming

 

Way back in seminary, now nearly eleven years ago, they told me that there would be weeks like this one.  I can remember my second year of seminary.  That is the year that you take your first preaching class.  All the second year students, or middlers, as they called us, were gathered in a large auditorium with three preaching professors.  We spent three or four weeks hearing what preaching was all about.  We read books from a couple of different experts.  We learned about the different kinds of sermons and how some of the greatest preachers prepare for their sermons.  To me, it felt like taking a Driver’s Education Course.  You had to sit and listen before you could get behind the wheel.  I was new to the preaching game back then.  I had probably preached a sermon or two, maybe three.  I was in a class with folks who were paying their way through seminary by preaching at churches.  They were the experts.  I was a beginner.  But I was ready to get behind a pulpit to do a little preaching.

 

Now, every once and a while, I think back to what one of those wise preaching professors said.  These aren’t his exact words, but they are his thoughts.  He said, “During your ministry, there will be weeks when your cup overflows and you feel the powerful presence of God surrounding you.  The sermon won’t be so hard to prepare then.  In fact, there may even be times when the sermon seems to write itself, and you are finished with it so early that you cannot wait for Sunday morning to arrive so that you can stand in front of the church and proclaim the glory of God.”  By the way, I think that that has only happened to me only a couple of times in these eleven years.  Back to what my professor said.  “Preaching will be an absolute joy during those weeks.  But there will be other weeks when it’s not that way.  Your week may be tough.  Perhaps

someone that you love will die and there will be other pressures, too.  Preaching is harder then.  It’s harder to preach when your cup is empty.  Saturday will come and you won’t be ready.  You will get out of bed on Sunday morning and wonder what you are going to do and what you are going to say.  You will read the morning’s scripture lesson and fervently pray and in that prayer you will make a deal with God.  If there is anything God can do to get you out of the situation you are in, you will do whatever is required.  And you will know what Fred Craddock, the great preacher and teacher of preachers meant when he talked about the unrelenting regularity of Sunday morning.”

 

I put a lot of pressure on myself to preach good sermons.  I think that you expect that out of me and well, you should.  I expect it out of me.  Through the years I have gotten some other advice on preaching.  One pastor told me that the more I preached, the easier the sermons would come.  I’m still waiting for that day.  The truth is that there ought to be a little discomfort when you stand in the pulpit.  After all, you are speaking for God.  It’s a holy calling.  It’s a great responsibility.  And I’m fearful.  I’m fearful that I will let you down or worse, that I will let God down.  Someone once said to me that when I am busy and the week is hectic, I should brush one of my old sermons off and preach it.  The truth is that the old ones are horrible.  You see I’m not the same preacher that I was when these lectionary passages appeared last.  That was three years ago.  The passages in the Lenten season and just after it have been tough and challenging.  That is why when I read the prescribed passages for this morning, I was grateful to see my old friend the 23rd Psalm.

 

These are great words.  We have heard them so many times.  The truth is that we think that we know the message of it even before we finish reading the words.  These words are among the first ones memorized by our children in Sunday School classes.  They are often the last words on the lips of those who are near death.  It is rare that we don’t read them at funeral services.  Grieving family members ask me to do that all the time.  The words seem like an old friend to them.  And in those times, we focus on the valley of the shadow of death and God leading us through it.  But these words are more powerful than being regulated to a funeral service.  Abraham Lincoln, I understand, used to pull out his copy of the Bible and read the words when he had the blues.  Another President, George W. Bush, opened his Bible and read them to us on a terrible September day in 2001.  Hardly a week goes by that I don’t open up my Bible and read the words of the 23rd Psalm.

 

If you are open to it.  If you will let them, if you are open to their magic, if you listen carefully to them, you just might find the answers to the questions that you have been asking for years, questions about yourself, others, and the world that we live in.  If you pay attention to the words, then you see that there is a natural progression in them, from still waters to being with God forever.  And I think that these words help us to see the world in a way that is less frightening.  They teach us to deal with the loss of people that we love.  They show us how to recognize the presence of God in times and in places when we might otherwise be so distracted by what is happening around us, that we would miss that presence.

 

In a mere fifty-seven words in the Hebrew language, twice that many in English, the author of the Psalm gives us the chance to look at our lives in a way that God hopes that we can see it.  If we are anxious, the Psalm gives us courage to overcome our fears.  If we are grieving, it offers us comfort.  But most of all, if we feel alone and adrift, without direction in our lives, the Psalm gives us the great assurance that God is with us.

 

Now there are enough sermons in these six verses to keep a preacher preaching for several Sundays.  If it is all right with you, I’ll only use them this weekend I will only preach one sermon.  This morning I would like for us to focus on the phrase, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.”  That has got to be one of the greatest lines in all of the Bible.  Listen to it in a couple of different versions: “Goodness and love unfailing, these will follow me all the days of my life.”  Here is another one, “I know that your goodness and love will be with me all my life.”  Try this one on for size, “Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life.”

 

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, now that is the version that we all grew up with.  Now church, what if I told you that there is a word in the sentence that could be translated another way and the alternative way could change the way that you look at things?  Let me give you the twist.  The word that means to follow can actually mean pursue.  We have always read this as meaning to follow.  But what if the Psalmist meant that God pursues us all the days of our lives?  There is a difference, you know, between being followed and being pursued.  Pursued is a much more active word than follow.  Pursued by goodness and mercy, now what would that be like?  Here I am, minding my own business, making my way through life.  I look over my shoulder and who is that following me?  Why that is goodness and mercy, not just following me, but tracking me down!  There is a difference in looking over your shoulder and seeing goodness and mercy tagging along, trudging up the hill behind you and being pursued by a breathless goodness and mercy, calling out to you, and saying, “We’re going to catch up with you sooner or later!”

 

Spend a little time in the Bible and you will see story after story of God tracking us, looking for us, following us, pursuing us.  Just read three chapters in the Bible and you will find Adam and Eve, there in the garden, hiding in the bushes.  They are hiding, in part, to cover their bodies, but mostly they are hiding to cover their sin.  God does not wait for their confession.  No, the words ring in the garden.  God asks, “Where are you?”  With the question, God begins pursuing our hearts.  Moses can tell you about it.  He was comfortable in life, tending the sheep of his father-in-law, when a bush caught on fire.  He thought that the end of his days would be comfortable.  He was sure that there was nothing left to do.  But God, you see, pursued him on top of a mountain.  Just ask the disciples and they will testify; they knew the feeling of being pursued by God.  They were rain soaked and shivering when they looked over their shoulders and saw Jesus walking on the water toward them.  God, you see, pursued them through a storm.  Just ask the woman at the well and she will tell you.  She was alone in life and alone at the well when she looked over her shoulder and saw a man who knew everything about her.  God, you see, pursued her in her pain.  Just ask John, the beloved disciple, exiled on the Island of Patmos.  He looked over his shoulder and saw the skies begin to open.  God, you see, pursued him in his exile.  Lazarus was in the tomb four days.  That is when he heard a voice, lifted his head, looked over his shoulders, and began to walk out of the tomb.  Jesus, you see, pursued him even to death.  And what about Peter? Peter denied Jesus three times and had gone back to his job as a fisherman.  He was fishing when he heard his name.  He looked over his shoulder and saw Jesus cooking breakfast.  You see, God pursued him in spite of his failure.  I hope that you get the point.  God is a God who not only follows, but pursues us.  I wonder.  Have you sensed that?  Have you looked over your shoulder and noticed that?  Oh, we miss him in so many places.  We miss him in the kindness of a stranger, in the majesty of a sunset, in the mystery of a romance, through the question of a child or the commitment of a spouse.

 

But often we miss his presence, his touch, because we turn our back on God and his pursuit of us.  Sometimes we high tail it and run.  Sometimes we don’t make room for goodness and mercy because of something that has happened.

 

That is the case of a man that I heard about.  Everyone who knew him thought that he was a grumpy and bitter man.  Many thought that he was mean.  He chased kids out of his yard.  Some say that he even chased them with a baseball bat.  He was resentful and bitter.  Some said that he had every right to be.  Those who knew him tell that his died while giving birth to their first child.  And the child only lived a short time.  After that, the man lived alone.  The only contact that he had with other people was necessary contact.  He never went to church.  He never ate at restaurants. He never had anything to do with anyone.

 

Near the end of his life, he was taken to the hospital.  It was his last trip there.  No one came to visit him in his room.  No one called him on the telephone.  No one sent flowers.  All of this, of course, was just fine with him.  It is how he wanted it.  He wanted to die as he had lived, alone.  At that hospital, there was a nurse.  Well, that’s not altogether true.  She was a student on the way to becoming a nurse.  She hadn’t learned all the lessons and did not know that nurses are taught not to get too close to their patients.  So she tried to be a friend to the man.  Of course, since it had been so long since he had a friend, the man didn’t know how to act.  She reached out to him and he would say in a grumpy voice, “Go away.  Leave me alone!”  She wouldn’t do that.  She just smiled and tried to coax him into eating one more bite of whatever it was that was on his plate.  At night, she would tuck him into bed and hear his growl, “Leave me alone!”

 

Soon he was too weak to resist her care and her love.  On her shift, she checked on him and would often pull a chair up to his bedside.  Sometimes she would sing softly to him as she held his weathered hand.  And the old man would look up at her in the dim light.  He could not help but to imagine his daughter.  She would be about this nurse’s age.  And when he did, a tear came to his eye.  The floodgates sometimes opened when she gently wished him a good night.  One night, for the first time in more years than he could remember, he whispered back, “God bless you.”

 

She left his room that night while two others remained behind.  They were breathless from all the years of their pursuit.  And just before he slipped into the valley of shadows, Goodness and mercy whispered in unison, “Don’t be afraid.  We’re here. We’ve got you!”  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me, shall pursue me, shall hunt me down and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.  Let us pray.

 

(Special thanks to the writings of Max Lucado for help with part of this sermon.  I found his discussion on this topic in his book Traveling Light very helpful.  Thanks also to the writings of Harold Kushner.  Harold has written a tremendous book on the 23rd Psalm, written after the events of September 11, 2001.  I highly recommend it.  And special thanks to God who continues to lead and guide us).